Henry Luce's Empire of Fascism

Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 31, Number 25, June 25, 2004 Hitler takeover in Germany, it was Hook and his mentor (and touted himself as the godfather of neo-conservatism. He iden- fellow CCF director) John Dewey, who provided the funding tified CCF founder Lionel Trilling, Leo Strauss, and Nashville and political support for the emigre´ invasion, through Colum- Agrarian writer John Crowe Ransom as the three leading in- bia University and the New School for Social Research, which tellectual influences on his life. later provided a home to fascist philosopher Leo Strauss, and ACCF board members included Sol Levitas, editor of Martin Heidegger’s mistress and Frankfurt School/CCF ideo- the New Leader. Levitas was a prote´ge´ of Allen Dulles and logue Hannah Arendt. C.D. Jackson. Dulles used Levitas’s New Leader to promote Irving Kristol, managing editor of The American Jewish the creation of a “commission of internal security” to investi- Committee’s Commentary magazine, served as ACCF’s first gate subversive influences in the United States. Levitas pro- Executive Director. Kristol, in a 1995 autobiographical essay, vided intelligence reports from his international correspon- Henry Luce’s Empire of Fascism In the Feb. 7, 1941 issue of Life magazine, founder and publisher Henry Luce authored and signed an editorial, “The American Century,” announcing that the American Synarchists intended to rule the world at the close of the war and impose their own jaded version of “American values” on the world, through “any means necessary.” Luce’s thesis was reproduced and mass-circulated throughout the United States. Three of the many “Mussolini covers” Time magazine featured The populations of the world, exhausted from the de- over the years. The first, from Aug. 6, 1923, was intended to struction of war and the bestiality of Hitler, Stalin, and wish “Benito a happy birthday.” Hiroshima, naturally hoped for something better. But the universal glimmer of optimism, of being able to rebuild, was further shattered when Allen Dulles, John J. McCloy, editor-in-chief. and their associates, including Luce, deployed to create Initial members of the board of directors of Time in- the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CFF), whose explicit cluded Henry P. Davison, Jr., a fellow classmate and purpose was to launch a fascist assault on truth as science Bonesman, whose father was a senior partner at J.P. and on Classical culture. Morgan. Davison brought in Dwight Morrow, another Morgan partner, to finance the start-up. Morgan interests Henry Luce: Mouthpiece for were further strengthened, when in 1927, John Wesley American Fascism Hanes was placed on the board. Start-up funding also came Time magazine was created in 1923 as a mouthpiece from William Hale Harkness, a board member, who was for the American Synarchists, grouped around the banking related to Rockefeller partner Edward S. Harkness. interests of J.P. Morgan. It is hardly a coincidence that, Luce’s personal lawyer, who would come to represent simultaneous to the launching of Time, in Europe, Count his entire media empire, was his brother-in-law Tex Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, another leading Synarchist, Moore, of Cravath, deGersdorff, Swaine and Wood, the was launching his Pan-European Union, which would be same firm which deployed both Allen and John Foster a leading propaganda vehicle for the winning of support Dulles to facilitate bringing Hitler to power in the early among Europe’s financial oligarchy for the “Hitler-Mus- 1930s. solini” universal fascism project. Luce was an intimate of Britain’s Lord Beaverbrook Henry Luce was just out of Yale University, where he and the Prince of Wales, who were notoriously pro-Hitler was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones (class and members of the Cliveden set. He also formed an ex- of 1920). Morgan funnelled Luce start-up cash, and Luce tremely close relationship with Winston Churchill, him- tapped numbers of his friends from his secret brotherhood self a promoter of Hitler in the early 1930s. to create and run what would become a propaganda empire. Americans were introduced to Benito Mussolini and In 1930, for example, Luce chose Russell Davenport, an Fascism in one of Time’s first issues, when the Synarchists intimate Bonesman, to become Fortune magazine’s first decided to celebrate Il Duce’s 40th birthday, and have 28 Feature EIR June 25, 2004 © 2004 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. dents to Henry Luce, for which he was paid. Philip Rahv, flagship intellectual journal for CCF. editor of Partisan Review, was also a board member of It was agreed that the Americans and British would have ACCF. Luce became Partisan Review’s financial angel when joint oversight over the London-based Encounter magazine, it was about to go bankrupt, and he also surreptitiously and there would be joint funding. ACCF executive director funded ACCF. Irving Kristol was chosen by Sidney Hook to become co- editor with British Fabian Stephen Spender. Close Encounter of the Third Kind Born in February 1909, Spender was orphaned in his early In early 1951, Frank Wisner travelled to London to meet teens, and in 1928, he entered University College, Oxford. with his counterparts in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service There, he was taken in by several leading literary giants with (SIS). Over a series of meetings it was decided to create a whom he formed close relationships. According to biographer Americans join them, by placing his portrait on the cover Luce’s role in the Morgan-organized “Smedley But- of the Aug. 6, 1923 issue of Time. This would be the first ler” coup plot against Roosevelt was significant. Luce pre- of Mussolini’s five cover appearances in Time. pared the entire July 1934 issue of Fortune as a detailed Luce was America’s fascist“Elmer Gantry.”He toured study of the political, cultural, and economic experiments the country selling fascism to America’s business elite and of Italian fascism. This was unheard of. The issue was upper class on the one hand, and using his mass propa- timed to appear as the coup went into its final month, and ganda outlets to “sell it to the mickeys” on the other. it was undoubtedly intended to rally upper-class support Luce unabashedly promoted Synarchy. Appearing be- for the coup and the transition to an American form of fore business groups, he promulgated the idea that Ameri- fascism. ca’s corporate and banking elites were more powerful and Although Luce later promoted the turn away from fas- important than the U.S. government, stating, “It is not a cism, when it was necessary to defeat Hitler, he heralded seat in Congress but on the directorate of the greatest cor- the postwar policy of the Anglo-American Synarchists porations which our countrymen regard as the greater post with his famous 1941 Life magazine editorial, “The Ameri- of honor and responsibility.” Likening America’s financial can Century,” which announced the Synarchist goal of tycoons to Europe’s aristocracy, he featured both in the Anglo-American world domination at the close of the war. pages of Fortune magazine. Luce wrote: “We must accept whole-heartedly our duty In an article in 1928, Luce declared the U.S. Constitu- and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation tion obsolete and called for “a new form of government.” in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world What was this new form of government? In March of the the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we same year, in a speech to businessmen in Rochester, N.Y., see fit and by such means as we see fit.” The editorial was he stated “America needs at this moment a moral leader, mass-produced and circulated widely; it appeared in full a national moral leader. The outstanding national moral in the Washington Post and Reader’s Digest. Although he leader of the world today is Mussolini.” On Nov. 28, 1930, did not include the point in this editorial, Luce would soon he stated to a Chicago audience that Mussolini’s Italy was a argue, also in the pages of Life, for preventive nuclear war success story: “A state reborn by virtue of Fascist symbols, against the Soviet Union. Fascist rank, and hence, Fascist enterprise.” Luce further The outlook of today’s Beast-Men, led by Vice Presi- declared, on April 19, 1934 in a speech to the Scranton, dent Dick Cheney, is a continuation of the policies repre- Pa. Chamber of Commerce, “The moral force of Fascism, sented by Luce and the fascists of the 1930s and 1940s. appearing in totally different forms in different nations, Cheney’s inner core of neocons are all signers of the found- may be the inspiration for the next general march of ing principles of William Kristol’s Project for a New mankind.” American Century, explicitly modelled on Luce’s theme. While Luce organized the upper crust through For- The Children of Satan, as Lyndon LaRouche has deter- tune, he fed the general population a carefully crafted diet mined they rightly be called, had Henry Luce as one of of stories about Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco through the their godfathers. Luce’s brothers at Skull and Bones gave writings of his foreign news editor, Laird Goldsborough, him the secret name of “Baal.” a publicly avowed fascist, anti-Semite, and pro-Nazi who The Congress for Cultural Freedom was created to im- in 1933 interviewed both Hitler and Mussolini. plement Luce’s “American Century.” Luce helped finance Luce had a visceral hatred of FDR and the New Deal.

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